


Renovatio

by berreh



Category: The Hollow Crown (2012)
Genre: Battlefield, Gen, Headcanon, Hurt/Comfort, Reunited and It Feels So Good, Sentimental, Shippy Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-29
Updated: 2016-09-29
Packaged: 2018-08-18 05:04:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8150051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/berreh/pseuds/berreh
Summary: After Agincourt, Henry visits the wounded.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> written 19 Sep 2012, the day after I first watched The Hollow Crown. One of my favorite things I've ever written.

_25 October 1415_  
_Comté d'Artois, France_

Twilight settled over the fields of Agincourt. The sun bled out in streaks of crimson and gold against the clouds, gold like the Plantagenet banners waving in the damp air, red like the torn ground and the flotsam of carnage still lying upon it. Further afield, where the mud was more solid and the stench of death less stifling, an army still dazed by its very existence gathered its tattered company in the glow of a sunset they thought never to see; but here, in the fetid mud strewn with arrows and pikes, as servant women reaped the gory harvest of armor and body parts, exultation was more subdued. As dusk turned to night, bonfires sprang up across the field to ward off the cold and encroaching mist. Torches lit along the row of tents at the edge of the forest, pitched and strung together to form a shelter for the streams of wounded flowing from the wreckage. All day they had straggled in, some limping, some carried; a few were buried in the forest, but for the others the surgeons and physicks did their best.

Through the slowly freezing mud, a solitary figure approached the infirmary. In his stained armor and wet boots, his fair face smudged with soot and dirt, he might have blended in with the men he greeted as they huddled around the fires. But he had no wish to disappear, not this time — he would be seen, and seen he was, tall and straight amid the carnage with his red hair bright against the gloom, ringed by a golden crown spattered with blood.

The men near the entrance lurched to their feet and doffed their caps, bowing as best they could. "God save your grace!"

"Sit, my good soldiers — for God’s love, sit you down." Henry raised his gloved hands and motioned for them to be seated. He entered the tent to the sound of their blessings, stooping beneath the flap held back for him; once inside, his smile waned. He was met at the door by the chief surgeon, who tried to hide the worst substances on his apron as he bowed.

"Are all the wounded gathered from afield?"

"Yes, your majesty."

"How do they?"

"If God be merciful, I think no more will join those already in the earth."

Henry crossed himself. "Jesu be thanked."

The surgeon dutifully mirrored the gesture, leaving a fresh splotch on his forehead, and bowed as Henry left him to return to his charge.

Henry walked in silence between the pallets and cots, each one occupied by a man who would live forever marked by this day — missing limbs, mangled extremities, ghastly wounds that bled their bearers white, pale faces marred by bruises and lined with agony. Many slept, whether from poppy or in swoon; others recognized the figure bending over them and tried to rise up from their beds. Henry waved each one back, bidding them to lie still. "You have bled enough for Harry today."

"God preserve me to do it again," said one, "whilst any man live who offends your grace."

Henry took the boy’s hand and grasped it between his own, smiling. He did the same to the others, to every man who could; for those who could not, he laid his hands on thin shoulders, bound arms, matted hair. He looked down into scores of faces, old and young, laborers and farmhands, none of noble blood, but English all the same. Some shivered with fever, some with chill, but all would survive, and all had been—

Henry froze where he stood, staring at a pallet near the tent's back wall. His mouth opened; his throat, hoarse from screaming, ached as something tightened in his chest.

"Your grace? Are you well, sire?"

Henry did not answer. He strode across the tent until he reached the bedraggled body shivering on frayed blankets. One eye was swollen shut, the flesh above it split by a ghastly wound, striping half the face with clotted blood; but the other half was clean, its tanned skin gone pale, its features unmistakable in the thin torch light. Henry dropped to his knees beside the bed, oblivious to the shocked gasps behind him, and laid his hand on blood-soaked black hair.

"Poins."

The undamaged eye opened; its owner blinked up in dull silence, until he spoke in a cracked voice.

"Jesu. I'm dead."

"If you are, then so am I, and I think Purgatory would smell sweeter than this," Henry said. "By my soul, Ned, is it truly you?"

Awake now, Poins almost attempted a smile. "True I never was, your grace, save only for one."

Henry laughed, but it was choked by armor that squeezed off his breath. "Here is a face I thought never to see again. How in God's name came you here? How long since you were in France?"

"As long as your grace has been," Poins said. "I sailed with the last muster from Cheapside."

"You, Ned? You, follow a muster, and bind yourself to be ruled?"

"A man can change, can he not?" Poins managed a grin. "My lord the king?" The movement made him wince, and the grin ebbed to a grimace. "Ah, I would your grace had never found me."

"What? Why speak you thus? Why did you not present yourself?"

Poins looked confused. "To who?"

"To me!"

"To you, my lord? What reason had I to stand in your grace? In truth, your grace must pardon me, for I joined the muster under a false name, and so the devil may add another charge to my ledger. No, my good lord. I came not to lower your grace to myself, but to raise myself to your grace."

A sharp ache stabbed at Henry's heart. "You offer penance for Harry's youth by fighting on Harry's field, and trade your soul to Death in ransom of his."

"When you cast off your wicked life, my prince, you cast off mine with it; but I was no prince, and I had no sacred mantle to cover my sins. Penance is my crown, good my lord, and atonement my scepter." He smiled. "Here is the truth of it, God help me — I was yours since first you spoke to me, Hal. I cannot live in your service, so I came to France to die in it."

His mottled face swam in Henry's vision. He let Henry take his hand, but he would not grasp it, nor would he meet Henry's eyes as his own filled with tears. He tried to look away, but he could not turn his head; instead he lay there in wretched agony, unable to hide his wounds, or his shame that they had not been mortal.

Henry drew in a breath and wiped his eyes with the back of one glove. "You have done your penance, good Ned, as surely as I live,” he said. "God pardon us both." Turning, he called back into the darkness. "Surgeon. Surgeon!"

"Here, your majesty."

"Send word to my lord Exeter — this man is to be tended by my physicians. Bid them find a place for him with the squires, and send for me when he is recovered."

"Aye, your grace, it shall be done."

Henry turned back to lean over the speechless Poins. "A squire yet, but not for long, I promise thee. Keep thy false name, Ned, for I swear I will make it a true one when thou canst see me with both eyes."

Poins did not speak, but his fingers clutched at Henry's hand. He was white with exhaustion and near swooning from pain; he shivered against the ground, and Henry drew the blanket closer around him and smoothed back his filthy hair.

"Sleep now, sweet Poins. All shall be well. When you wake, it will be in a different bed than this."

"Henry—"

"Do as your king commands, squire," Henry said, in a tone of voice neither of them had heard in a very long time. He smiled and wiped the tears from Poins' face, smearing the blood and sweat. "Sleep now. I shall call on you anon."

For a moment Poins looked as if he would speak again, but instead he withdrew his hand from beneath Henry's and placed it on top, anchoring himself by its weight, and let his head rest against the glove cradling his face.

"Anon anon, sir," he said, and grinned as he fell asleep.


End file.
